Why Sony’s PSP Go speed boost won’t up the eye candy

An FCC filing shows that the top CPU speed on Sony's forthcoming PSP Go will …

SonyInsider dug up an FCC filing that indicates that the forthcoming PSP Go will have a significantly faster top processor speed than than current PSP models. Specifically, the Go's CPU can clock up to 480MHz, compared to the 333MHz speed of the existing models.

The site ends the post by asking the obvious question: "What will a 480MHz PSP Go bring to the table?" I suspect the answer to this is, "Nothing that hasn't already been announced." Let me explain.

If Sony is going to transition from physical media to digital distribution and an app store model, it will want to take full advantage of a very old technology that cuts back on download times by trading processor cycles for network bandwidth and storage space: compression. UMD PSP games are already highly compressed, and this accounted for the initial PSP models' epic load times—load times that were decreased with later additions of more memory for caching uncompressed data.

PSP Go users will be relying on wireless connections to move content onto the device, and right now PSP games max out at 1.8GB, which is the size of a UMD. My guess is that Sony will loosen the 1.8GB size restriction at some point, so PSP users may end up with relatively large game downloads. When you add in any downloadable game add-ons and expansions that Sony makes available, it's clear that the 16GB of storage on the device will be fairly precious. It's also the case that it costs money to serve up large downloads—bandwidth is not yet free. So developers will get pressure from Sony to keep file sizes down in order to minimize transport charges. All of this indicates that compression will be every bit as important as it was in the UMD era, if not more so.

My guess is that the extra 147MHz that the Go will ship with will be used to unpack game data that has been compressed to the gills. It may also go to non-game, Go-specific applications, like a browser. Where it will probably not go, however, is toward improved graphics for games.

For the foreseeable future, the PSP Go is likely to represent a very small fraction of the PSP installed base, so it makes little sense for a developer to spend any resources on higher quality assets for a version of a game that will only reach a tiny slice of users.

So as much as I'd like to fantasize about improved visuals on Sony's new UMD-less handheld, I'm afraid we'll have to wait for the second-generation PSP to get anything like that. And given the financial shape that Sony is in right now, I can imagine that the company is currently more focused on looking for ways—like the PSP Go and online game store—to monetize existing technology investments than it is on accelerating the production of the next portable console.�

Get used to the PSP's graphics, because they'll probably be with us for some time to come.